Engaging 'Elizabethtown' opens fest

ELIZABETHTOWN (star)(star)(star)

The 41st Chicago International Film Festival opens Thursday with Cameron Crowe's "Elizabethtown" and a special salute to one of its stars, Susan Sarandon.

While last year's fest led off with eventual Oscar nominee "Kinsey," this gala premiere gives us an advance look at one of the season's eagerly awaited Hollywood pictures -- a romantic comedy about failure, roots and going home, starring Orlando Bloom, Kirsten Dunst, Sarandon and Alec Baldwin. Both Crowe ("Jerry Maguire," "Almost Famous") and Sarandon will be in attendance -- Sarandon to accept this year's Career Achievement Award.

"Elizabethtown" is Crowe's tribute to the American heartland. Though it doesn't redo Norman Rockwell's homespun domain of small-town humors and virtues, this movie does, in a way, expand on it. The film reminds us that our heartland can be very inclusive.

Typically for Crowe, "Elizabethtown" is the story of the romantic revival of a seeming failure, in this case, a business prodigy with small-town roots (Orlando Bloom), who rocks up from the ashes at a family funeral in Elizabethtown, Ky., while also finding love with Dunst's killer-smile airplane stewardess Claire Colburn.

In imagining this, ex-Rolling Stone writer Crowe again crossbreeds his two great passions, rock 'n' roll and classic American romantic comedy, into a potent blend.

Bloom plays Drew Baylor, a small-town genius in the unlikely field of shoe design, who has masterminded a project -- a new supershoe with an unfortunate resemblance to a "Star Wars" gadget -- which has earned disastrous reviews and dropped corporate king Alec Baldwin's company, Mercury, into a billion-dollar bath.

The opener, a comic night-mare of Drew's career meltdown, is the most intense sequence in the entire movie. Yet, if huge failure, near suicide and family tragedy (the death of Drew's dad) open up "Elizabethtown," the mood changes when Dunst shows up. She's this movie's equivalent to "Maguire's" Renee Zellweger or Kate Hudson in "Famous": a darling with a roguish twinkle who turns into the redemptive girlfriend.

That mood lightens further with the appearance of Sarandon, the American movies' current favorite earth mother, as Drew's iconoclastic mom: an amateur stand-up comedian who brings down the house at the memorial service. Supporting her is a pack of amiable, sometimes slightly twisted all-American neighbors (Southern cooking show host Paula Deen, Bruce McGill, Loudon Wainwright Jr., etc.) in the "About Schmidt" mold, all of whom help reawaken the morose Drew's appetite for life.

"Elizabethtown" isn't the great American comedy we would have hoped. But it's a sweet, funny, sprawling movie that tries and sometimes succeeds at getting the things we miss in most modern American romantic (or sex) comedies: human feeling, social savvy, maturity and real theatrical flair.

If the movie doesn't fully work, it's partly because this essentially small, personal story does get too inflated a backdrop, too heavy a treatment. (Why a billion-dollar failure? Wouldn't half a billion suffice?) Leading-man Bloom, a charmer in action spoofs such as "Pirates of the Caribbean," doesn't supply the kind of comic charm this movie needs; he's not the latter-day Jack Lemmon Crowe wanted.

Still, Dunst has pizazz enough for both of them. Even if she's in a few too many cutesy romantic games, she fires up the film whenever she's on.

"Elizabethtown" falls a bit short, but only in relative terms. It's no "The Apartment," no "It's a Wonderful Life," not even an "Almost Famous." But it has funny lines, some heartfelt scenes, a rich background, a keen "finding America" coda and a great rock score (including a cover of Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Free Bird" by My Morning Jacket, Elton John's "My Father's Gun" and an unreleased song by Tom Petty). And, of course, it has the knockout presence of Dunst.

MPAA rating: PG-13 (for language and some sexual references).

"Elizabethtown"

(star)(star)(star)

Directed and written by Cameron Crowe; photographed by John Toll; edited by David Moritz; production designed by Clay A. Griffith; produced by Tom Cruise, Paula Wagner, Cameron Crowe. A Paramount Pictures release; opens in theaters Oct. 14. Running time: 1:57.

Drew Baylor .......... Orlando Bloom

Claire Colburn ....... Kirsten Dunst

Hollie Baylor ........ Susan Sarandon

Heather Baylor ....... Judy Greer

Ellen Kishmore ....... Jessica Biel

Phil ................. Alec Baldwin

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"Elizabethtown" will screen at the Chicago Theatre, with Sarandon's award ceremony set for 7 p.m., and the screening for 7:30 p.m. For information or tickets, call 312-332-FILM or log on to www.chicagofilmfestival.com.